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For flattering photographs it is necessary to have adequate separation between camera and subject.

The distance you have to place the camera from the subject to frame the subject properly (not too close to exclude part of what you want to show and not so far away that you include stuff you don’t want to show)
depends on the focal length of the lens. With a short focal length you have to get closer to the subject than you would with a longer focal length lens.

However, if the camera is too close the image will be
significantly distorted (see https://youtu.be/HG-vPzrEONM). This explains why selfies are rarely flattering!

But the maximum practical focal distance is governed by how big the room you are shooting is!

So some compromise may be required here. One shouldn’t get too obsessed about this issue but if an appropriate longer focal lens is available and you have sufficient room, take the shot from further away.

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Before you can decide how to light your subject, you’ll have to decide what the subject is! If you are photographing a person is it only the person you interested in or do you want to photo them “in context” (in their place of work for example).

Having decided on the subject you can check whether there is adequate light falling on it. You can do this with one or more test shots or with a light meter.

Before we go any further we need to distinguish between soft light and low light. Low light is simply weak light and has little to commend it from a photographer’s perspective. Soft light is light that creates gentle transitions from lit areas to shadows, whereas harsh light has abrupt transitions. Usually, a photographer will want soft light. Soft light is created by a light source that appears to be big from the perspective of the subject. For example, although the sun is big in absolute terms (very big!!), from the surface of the surface of the Earth it appears to be quite small. That’s why portraits taken on a sunny day have bright spots, very deep shadows, and sharp edges between them.

If however the light source is big compared to a face (say a 1 metre wide light only half a meter away) then the light to dark transitions are much gentler. The video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwv7WuJOCkU&t=502s shows this well. It’s quite long so watch as much as you want.

The easiest way to light a subject that is in-doors is natural light from a window or open door. It’s naturally soft and flattering because of its size. If you want gently erotic bedroom images shooting near a window is a great option!

If there’s not enough natural light you’re going to have to use some form of artificial light: flash or continuous light. Flash has traditionally been used for still images because the light output has only to be sustained for a very brief period, reducing power demands and equipment cost. Nowadays LED lighting is becoming more affordable. With continuous lighting it easier to see how the light falls on the subject without the need for test shots.

If you intend to use your mobile phone and flash you may be fortunate enough to have one with a built-in flash (https://thesmartphonephotographer.com/truth-about-smartphone-cameras-flash).

If not, you’re going to have to spend a significant amount of money and buy, say, a digital SLR or, better, a mid-range mirrorless camera. There’s a good market place in second hand camera gear from reputable dealers.

If you do have a mobile phone with a built-in flash you can use that, but these tend to be rather low powered. More seriously they generally produce very flat and boring images. It’s far better to use a flash that’s off to the side of the camera and the subject. Pretty well any speed light (flash unit) you buy (for under £100) these days can be triggered optically, so set your camera flash to a low level and let this trigger your main flash (see https://youtu.be/oSidZJx9QWI).

If you’re using a dedicated camera with a built in flash you can use the same trick of optical triggering an off-camera flash or buy a cheap radio trigger. I find that this is more reliable.

Whilst natural light tends to be soft flash light is hard as the output is from a small area. So light “modifiers” of various types can be used

(see https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/how-to-achieve-soft-light-for-portraits and https://youtu.be/nuoc53wcnbc).

Also, see https://youtu.be/nuoc53wcnbc.

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Photographic composition is a vast subject. Entire books could be written on this subject! In fact, they have! So I’m only going to be able to cover a very few basic points.

An advantage you have, as someone photographing some you know rather than using a professional, is that you’ll know the subject well, will have plenty of time and multiple occasions for photo sessions, and will be relaxed together. So if you get the mechanics of photography right you have every chance of taking some great photos!

The first thing you should do when taking a photo is to ask yourself what the photo is about? What is the main subject? Often, this is pretty obvious. It’s a photo of my boyfriend, for example. So once you’ve identified the main subject you can start to eliminate anything that distracts from that. Such as:

• that dirty coffee cup
• the discarded clothing
• the distracting bedside light
• the jazzy bed cover

You get the idea!

You might also find that the general background is cluttered and distracting. I’ll devote much more time to this issue in a later blog.

It’s generally found that certain elements in an image are pleasing to the eye. These include diagonal lines, symmetry, and elements that give a sense of depth to the photo. Sorry this is so vague! You might find the video on https://youtu.be/ecZxfAiue1A useful. if not, there are lots of other youtube videos on photographic composition.

Finally, an error I often see in photos of people is ignoring perspective. A common example is “frogs legs syndrome”! If you take a photo of someone with them lying on a bed with their feet towards you, then their feet and legs will seem disproportionally large. Perspective causes things nearest to the camera to look bigger than things further way!

That’s all I’m going to say about composition for now. The next topic will be image exposure.

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So how can a novice photographer improve their photos? In the first few blog article I’ll give some introductory tips on focus, exposure and composition of an image, and then develop these in future blogs.

Let’s start with focus in this blog because if the focus is off the image is pretty well useless! A particular lens on a camera can only focus on objects at one distance at a time. This is the focus distance. Objects at other distances will be out of focus and will, to a greater or lesser extent, be blurred. If the lens has a focus ring then the focus distance can be changed to another value. Don’t confuse focus distance with focal length; that’s a fixed property of a lens that determines how wide or narrow its “view” is.

That sounds pretty useless for a camera doesn’t it? No photographer will be able to arrange for everything to be at the focus distance. So photographers have come up with the idea of a depth of field with a minimum focal distance and maximum focal distance. Between these values the objects will “acceptably” sharp.

The depth of field for a particular lens on a particular camera depends on the aperture of the lens. The aperture is how wide “open” the lens is, and the camera user can usually control this directly. Aperture is measured in the f stop number, such as f/8. Aperture values are typically f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22, or intermediate values. Notice the / indicating that the f stop number is a fraction, so a large number on the bottom as is f/16 indicates a small aperture.

The depth of field of a lens is highest when the stop number is high, with, say f/16, and lower when the lens is wide open with say, f/2.8.

So to improve your chances of getting your subject in focus you should use an aperture such as f/16, right? Yes, but! A small aperture such as f/16 will admit a relatively small amount of light, requiring you to make changes to the shutter speed (the time the shutter of the camera is open), shine more light on the subject, or change the ISO value (see later blog).

So some difficult trade offs often have to be made when taking photographs! I didn’t say photography was easy did I?

In the next blog I will look at image composition.

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